Such a device is known from American patent application US2001/0011352, which describes a method and system for theft prevention of a computer system.
Furthermore, Japanese patent publication JP2002173003 describes a theft prevention system for earth-moving equipment, i.e. machinery driven by an engine, which can be utilised in different geographic locations. In this invention, the earth moving equipment comprises means to determine the actual location and compare it to a predetermined permissible area, which may be a different area each time depending on the work to be done. The permissible area is set up by an operator or a management department of the earth-moving equipment.
In case the earth-moving equipment is outside the permissible area, the operation of the earth-moving equipment is interrupted by shutting down the engine. Furthermore, an alarming signal including the actual location can be transmitted from a transmitter in the earth moving equipment to a monitoring station via satellite so that the stolen earth-moving equipment can be retrieved or alternatively that the shutting down of the engine may be reversed by the monitoring station when the machinery was moved outside the permitted area by accident.
Note that as the monitoring of the machinery is performed at a remote location, a satellite transmitter is needed for each piece of earth-moving equipment that needs to be protected which makes this solution relatively expensive.